Pacific division predictions

2.  Vegas Golden Knights

Boy oh boy does Jack Eichel ever have a great story to his career after last season. Never gets a sniff at the playoffs with the Sabres, the franchise pisses him off so he demands a trade, gets traded to Vegas, and in his first trip to the playoffs with the Knights wins the cup. You can’t make this stuff up.

But why am I predicting Vegas will slip? Well, Edmonton and Vegas are the best teams in the Pacific by far so whoever leads the division will cause the other to slip to second.

I think there will be a cup hangover for Vegas, as there usually is for any team that wins the Cup. Playoff hockey takes a lot out of NHL players, which is a big reason why they’re so disappointed when they fall short and why they are so exhilarated when they win the Cup. No matter how hard players train, this fatigue is still present to an extent the next season, which is why you so rarely see teams repeat as Cup winners. It’s very hard to go through the physical grind of a long playoff run two seasons in a row. Why do you think Tampa Bay was so gassed against the Maple Laffs last season? They were bucking the odds already, it was only a matter of time before the chickens came home to roost. I don’t think Vegas will be any different.

Vegas has been known to buck the odds before (no pun intended in this case) but even then these are long odds and teams like Tampa Bay or the late 90s Red Wings are the exception, not the rule.

Then there’s the fact that the cup tax has to be paid for any roster that wins the Cup. This is the term for the inflationary pressures teams will feel re-signing players after a cup win. After all their agents can always say “my guy helped you win a cup” – and they’re not wrong.

Then there’s what turned out to in essence to be two transactions that had a profound impact on their roster on paper – trading Reilly Smith as a cap casualty to the Pittsburgh Penguins and giving his money to Ivan Barbashev. Barbashev is a fine player – and both players have good defensive acumen – but Smith has more upside offensively, and even though the offence put up by Barbashev is comparable it’s still less than what Reilly put up last season. Since the NHL is a game of inches, this may impact the season even though both players are comparable.

What really confused me about trading Smith to the Penguins is all the GKs got back was their own third-round draft pick (previously traded away to rent the services of Teddy Blueger, who ended up signing with the Canucks in free agency). The guy scored 20 goals and 50 points and all you could get was one middling draft pick for him? That just seems like the Knights really got fleeced on that one. That player type should be worth at least a second-round pick.

There’s also the penchant of Mark Stone as an injury-prone player – he’s only gotten close to playing a full season once in his career when he played for Ottawa and played 80 games. When he’s out, that’s a key player out of the lineup for long stretches of time.

Nonetheless, Vegas is still a strong team and not to be trifled with. Take a look at their top six and see how dangerous they are. Chandler Stephenson is Vegas’s answer to Leon Draisaitl – underrated and under-recognized to Jonathan Marchessault. Nonetheless, the fact remains they are a fantastic 1-2 punch at center for the GKs – still not as good as the McDrai duo, but certainly comparable in terms of overall play.

They’ve also got pretty good bottom-six forwards, too – take a look at their stats from last season and see how they compare to the line combos posted. Not a weak spot in the bunch from what I can see.

Their D pairings are quite formidable too, but IMO the Oiler’s pairings are a bit better in the top four, with Vegas holding the edge only in the bottom pairing.

The goalies for Vegas did a great job last season but both are facing the same question as Stuart Skinner – can they do it again?

Vegas had a lot of injuries between the pipes last season, and they ended up letting Laurent Broissoit and trade deadline pickup Jonathan Quick walk. Was that the wrong decision? Only time will tell.

When the dust settled what we have is Logan Thompson, who broke out as a 1A last season with similar stat lines to Skinner. But – can he do it again? Or will he be another Jim Carey, who had an outstanding rookie season for Washington only to drop off the map for the rest of his career? His partner will be Adin Hill, who up until last season was known only as a very good backup. Like Thompson, Hill will have to prove last season wasn’t a fluke for him.

If the goaltending holds up, they will provide significant opposition to the Oilers all season long, but still IMO only second best.

All of that being said, with George McPhee at the helm of this team, you can never truly count them out.